


Roll the Bones

by howler32557038



Series: The Simple Life [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Clothed Sex, Domestic Disputes, Fight Sex, Fighting Kink, Fingerfucking, Fist Fights, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Loving Marriage, M/M, Name-Calling, Porn With Plot, Post Mpreg, Post The Simple Life, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre Something Good Can Work, Rimming, Rough Kissing, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Show Me Your Dick Steve, Shower Sex, Suit Kink, Suit Sex, just dudes being gay, just guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-06-28 01:57:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15697797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howler32557038/pseuds/howler32557038
Summary: Five years after the events ofThe Simple Life, Bucky and Steve are taking turns on active duty with the Avengers. When one takes a mission, the other acts as ground control from home and cares for their son. They're determined to keep doing what they can to save the world, but they won't risk leaving Lincoln orphaned, should things go wrong in the field.But Steve has a bad habit of missing check-ins with HQ. On a risky mission gathering intel on A.I.M and already two days past his ETA at the Facility, he's been radio-silent for 72 hours. And Buckyhasbeen counting.Five years ago, Lincoln was conceived with tearful kisses and tender promises. Brooklyn, on the other hand, was conceived not with a whimper, but with a bang.





	1. God Damn Steve Rogers

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all the incredible support for Chapter 1 of [Jump the Picket Fence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15675819)!
> 
> There were several people I wanted to gift this fic to, but then I was like...is that appropriate? Is it creepy to just give your friends kinky rough suit-wearing porn?
> 
> Have fun!

**MAY 6, 2022**

Bucky has been in front of this fucking ops computer for five hours.

There’s a knife in his hand.

And a five year old in his lap.

He’s considering killing the boy’s father, if he’s not already dead.

Granted, it’s just a pocket knife. It would be hard to kill Steve with it. _Hard,_ but not entirely impossible. Really, he’s just using it to clean some stubborn dirt, comprised of crayons and modelling clay, out from underneath the thumbnail of his right hand. He’d been picking the mess off the kitchen table earlier, because an unforgiving, merciless God decided that children should be creative long before they’re neat.

“Can I play with it?”

Lincoln mumbles the question sleepily into the fabric of Bucky’s shirt. Bucky is hot and sweating wherever Lincoln’s body is making contact with his own, and he’s clinging tighter now, depleting the reserves of Bucky’s patience. Stupid questions don’t help much, either.

“Please let me play with it.”

“My _knife?”_

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not a toy.”

 _“You’re_ playing with it—”

“Lincoln Samuel.”

Guilty silence. He buries his face back into Bucky’s chest. Bucky _hopes_ he feels guilty. He’d _known_ the goddamn answer to _Hey, I’m five, can I play with your knife?_ He just wants attention. Just trying to start a conversation, even if it gets him in trouble—

Oh.

The silence stretches on, but now the guilt is all Bucky’s.

“Why can you play with knives and I’m not allowed to, though?”

“Because I have fine motor skills.”

“What’s fine motor skills?”

“Means I won’t cut myself.”

“Um...because your fake hand’s got a motor,” Lincoln decides. Bucky doesn’t correct his groggy revelation or its absurd logic —  he just stares down at the top of his son’s head, thinking about the swiftly developing enhanced brain inside of it, and wondering where, in the course of these last five years, he went wrong.

At least he could pace before. About three hours ago, Lincoln had called him from the apartment to tell him he couldn’t sleep without him there. Bucky didn’t know what to do besides wrap him in a blanket, bring him down to Operations with him, and let him sleep in his lap.

The Operations Deck of the Facility is expansive. Bucky thinks it looks a little like the command center of one of Fury’s helicarriers, and he wonders sometimes if that had been a purposeful choice on Stark’s part — some kind of callback to the Avenger’s first mission together as a team. The stations in the main control room are dark, except for a few specialists who are either working very late or very early. Bucky is shut in a separate, smaller control room, with a door marked _OPS CONTROL: A-LEVEL_. Not all the staff has clearance to run ground control for the Alpha-level team members. The privacy of the room keeps them from even knowing where the team’s Quinjet is.

Unfortunately, those same security measures mean that the room runs on its own server. That server is contained within the room. Despite a lot of climate control, it’s hot.

It’s even hotter with an enhanced, metabolic _blackhole_ of a child on your lap. Lincoln might be small for five, but he’s feeling heavier by the minute.

He’d slept alright for a while, but now he’s restless, tossing and turning and putting his knees and elbows everywhere they shouldn’t be. Bucky wishes Lincoln would just give up on dozing for the moment and get the hell off him: there are two cups of coffee in his system and he needs a bathroom break _soon._

Lincoln reaches out of his tangled blanket to grab Bucky’s prosthetic hand by the fingers and drape it over him, pressing his forehead hard into Bucky’s throat. “Did Dad come home yet?” His voice is _pitifully_ hopeful.

The intrusive, violent thoughts are back in an instant.

Goddamnit, he ought to kill Steve.

God _damn_ it, he hopes he’s alright.

“Not yet, baby. We’re still waiting.”

“Is Dad in trouble?”

Bucky has to swallow a knot in his throat before he speaks. He doesn’t want to sound afraid. “I don’t know, baby.” God, he doesn’t want Lincoln to think he’s actually worried and yet he can’t bring himself to lie about the gravity of a mission. He wishes he could kiss away every doubt in his little boy’s mind, even though Lincoln has now moved on from just fiddling with Bucky’s shirt; now, he’s repeatedly poking at the center of Bucky’s stomach, for some reason — oh, must have been to find his _fucking_ belly button and jam his _goddamn_ finger into it. What the fuck is wrong with him. Why does he love to do that.

“I wasn’t even talking about the mission he’s doing,” Lincoln clarifies, undaunted in his efforts until Bucky forcibly removes his index finger from his navel and then holds his hand, making it clear that he loves him dearly, but that the poking and digging had better fucking stop. “I meant, like, if — he’s going to be in trouble with _you.”_

“Oh,” Bucky says, smiling in spite of himself. “We’ll see. Maybe he’s got a good reason for being late.”

“But if he doesn’t have one, um, can I maybe watch him get in trouble?”

Lincoln’s request seems oddly earnest. “Why, you think it’d be funny to see me yell at him?”

“I was just thinking about, maybe I could _help_ you yell at him.”

“What’s the matter with you, Lincoln?” he laughs. “No, you cannot help me yell at your dad.”

“But I could tell him we didn’t get any sleep because of him.”

And Bucky knows that Lincoln’s just wheedling now, but his heart breaks anyway. It certainly wouldn’t be untrue. “I said no, Lincoln.”

Thankfully, the firmness of Bucky’s answer plunges the room back into silence again, and Bucky can go back to hoping his son might doze off, catch a few more hours of sleep, and not be miserable all day tomorrow. That’ll make one of them, at least, and Bucky can deal with the exhaustion. He won’t be able to sleep until he hears from Steve, anyway.

The quiet doesn’t last long, though. It never does.

“Papa, I want to go make breakfast together.”

“It’s four in the morning. Try to go back to sleep.”

“I did try. I’m too hungry.”

“Try again.”

“No, because I’m too hungry and I can’t—”

“Lincoln, quit whining, baby. It’s late and you’ve got to go to sleep, or—”

“I said _no,_ Papa.”

Bucky’s jaw tightens reflexively. God, Lincoln might as well have just played him a recording of his own fucking voice. He manages to say those words _exactly_ like him. A perfect imitation.

Which makes Bucky realize what an asshole he sounds like to his son.

He shakes off the wave of guilt, trying to think logically instead. It is four o’clock in the morning. Lincoln hasn’t had even three hours of good sleep. Even under stressful circumstances — and tonight has been undeniably stressful — Bucky recognizes the need to maintain a consistent routine. Being hungry every waking hour is nothing new, though; every growth spurt he hits, he starts waking up in the middle of the night, begging for a snack, and they indulge him to a point, but sleep is just as important as calories. Bucky’s not changing his answer. Besides — his ma would have socked him in the mouth if he’d ever talked to her like that. Lincoln’s lucky it’s 2022 and not 1922, and he’s got two dads who are soft as butter with him. A hundred years ago, a kid would have had to pick a switch for that kind of attitude. And Bucky knows _that_ firsthand.

He repositions Lincoln in his lap, knowing that winning this argument will mean ignoring his aching kidneys for a few more hours at least, wraps Lincoln a little tighter in his blanket, and circles his arms around him. The embrace is equal parts loving gesture and acceptable method of restraint. “We can have a big breakfast at seven. Either sleep here, or you’re going back to your room.”

But Lincoln is tired, and he undoubtedly _is_ hungry, and whether or not he knows how to verbalize it, he’s likely just as worried about Steve as Bucky is. He doesn’t like the ultimatum at all: he pushes Bucky’s arms off him, whining wordlessly, and slides off his lap. He sits down on the cold floor, intentionally putting his back to Bucky, and scrubs at his eyes.

One of these days, he’s going to learn that throwing a fit only works with Dad, and it is never, _ever_ going to work with Bucky.

“Fine, do whatever you want. Sleep on the floor,” Bucky sighs, manually refreshing the feed that shows the surrounding airspace, and still finding no sign of the Quinjet that should have brought Steve home two days ago. He tosses the blanket to the floor indifferently, letting it fall heavily over his boy’s sullen, slouched frame. Even with half of it draped precariously over his head, Lincoln crosses his arms and stubbornly ignores it.

Bucky almost laughs. He brought this on himself, didn’t he? He’s raised his son to be just as petty as Bucky Barnes.

* * *

 

Although Bucky is not impressed by Lincoln’s behavior, he at least has to respect his commitment. He doesn’t even glance at the blanket once it finally tumbles to the floor, or at Bucky, or _move_ for the next hour. Just sits there with his skinny little arms crossed, brooding as well as anyone can brood when they’re wearing a pair of fuzzy pajamas covered in little Hulks. His perseverance does eventually begin to pay off — Bucky’s sympathy for his sulking child has almost won out over his worry for Steve now, and he slumps low in his chair, hand over his eyes to block some of the blue light from the bank of monitors, all but resigned to calling Vision to watch the screens for him while he cooks an early breakfast and puts on a movie for his son.

Luckily, the door to the ops room opens just before he can concede the fight in Lincoln’s favor.

“Yep, thought I might find you guys in here,” Tony says softly, like he’s actually reluctant to impose for once. “Still not answering his cell, either?”

Bucky checks his phone again, just in case he’s somehow missed the chime of a text message, then lets it drop heavily into his lap in answer.

“Okay,” Tony replies, voice affectedly light with resolution. “If we haven’t heard from him in another hour, I’m cancelling my meetings and taking a suit out to look for him.”

Bucky makes himself keep his mouth shut for a few seconds before he responds. If he doesn't take a moment to breathe, he'll end up saying something regrettable to Tony. Something about how much he _hates_ this — how he wishes Steve would just give up this fucking gig and be home with his family. He doesn’t want to let himself say it, because most of the time, it’s not how he feels. But when Steve is injured, or when he doesn’t come to bed for a few days because he’s poring over reports, or when he’s _two days late coming home,_ Bucky starts to resent the entire ridiculous concept of _Captain America._ He just wants Steve.

But Bucky understands that the A.I.M. case is important. He knows Steve is just following up on a lead, that his investigation was unlikely to take him into combat, and he knows that if Steve doesn't keep working, he'd lose his mind. But right now, when he hasn’t been home in a week and he hasn’t returned any communication to HQ and there's no sign of the jet and Bucky can't do _anything_ but sit in ops and pray he's not in trouble, he wants Steve taken off of active duty. Fuck Steve's happiness. Right now, he'd rather see him safe. And Bucky knows Tony feels the same way. He'd pull Steve off missions in a heartbeat if Bucky asked him to. That's exactly why he can't ask.

“You want the next big mission, Barnes? Because I would be _delighted_ to bench Rogers if you feel he’s in need of a harsh reprimand.”

“I’ll take care of the reprimand.”

“Ew, and hot for some reason. Look, Barnes, he’s probably fine. You know him. He’s thorough. He doesn’t leave a job half finished. He’s got zero respect for his ground control. And the general concept of authority. Used to do this to Hill all the time — she got used to it.”

“Lincoln shouldn’t have to get used to it,” Bucky says softly, and it seems to strike something inside Stark that makes him catch Bucky’s gaze and hold it.

“What do you want me to do? _When_ he gets home, how do you want this handled? No, really, I’m serious — because the minute he gets out in the field, he’s a bachelor with a fetish for martyrdom again, and if you wanna send a message that that’s no longer acceptable, I’ll pull rank and be the bad guy. I can do it — I sign the paychecks.”

Bucky has to laugh, despite the anxiety tugging at the edge of every other thought. “Thanks, Tony.”

“Want me to take him off the A.I.M. investigation?”

“No, he’s just about to blow it wide open—”

“Oh no, I know, he’s obsessed with this case. Captain’s gone Captain Ahab. Which is exactly why I should take it over right before he closes it and cuff the pricks myself.”

“Watch your language.”

Tony’s face lights up. “Oh my God.”

“Lincoln’s right there.”

“Oh, gosh, yeah, never mind. Sorry. So, should I pull him off the op? Your call.”

Bucky should say no. But _Steve_ should have contacted someone. He _wants_ to say yes.

But he might have a good reason for not making contact. He could be hurt. He could be a lot worse than just _hurt._ Bucky can’t stand the thought of having all this bitterness on his conscience if something happened to Steve.

He’s not going to entertain the thought that something happened to Steve. He’s going to say yes.

“Papa, there’s a blue box that’s flashing.”

Bucky and Stark turn to the radar and find it empty, but Lincoln points to another screen on the monitor bank that shows a grid of the Facility’s four hangers. The Hanger C door is open.

_“Rogers and Wilson have landed safely, boss.”_

Stark meets Bucky’s eyes again, and this time he’s offering a second chance — he’d seen Bucky struggling, weighing his worry against his anger. He wants an answer before he goes down to meet them.

“I got it.”

Stark gives him a single, sharp nod of acceptance. “Okay. You want a hug?”

“Nope.”

“God, you’re like Steve without all the gross stuff. It’s good,” he grins blithely as he backs away toward the elevators, waving to Lincoln as he departs. “Bye, kiddo, I’m gonna go debrief your dad.”

“Are you gonna fire him?”

“Not today. Your papa said not to,” Stark winks, excusing himself.


	2. God, Damn Steve Rogers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pleasant reunion takes a turn for the worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tkall left me a really nice comment and I feel like crap and have no sense of time, so ya'll get the next chapter right now in the middle of the night instead of tomorrow.

Steve likes to think that his relationship is without hardship. When he talks to his teammates about his homelife, he bleeds positivity about every conceivable aspect: he tells Banner how well they communicate; he tells Tony how well they balance work and family time; he tells Wanda about the early days of their friendship, when their unconventional romance was blossoming in spite of insurmountable challenges; and he tells Natasha, because he’s close enough to her to be frank and casual, how incredible the sex is. Natasha always wants to know if the sex is still good. Steve would never tell Bucky, but he’s occasionally gone into detail. He trusts Natasha with a secret, if only because he’s keeping a few of hers in his back pocket.

He likes to think of himself as generally honest and open, but on this particular subject, he’s honest only with Sam. If the waters get rough with Bucky (as they frequently do, because of the arduous tasks of raising a son in secret, homeschooling, working dangerous jobs with unpredictable hours, and their starkly different, occasionally volatile personalities) Sam is the only one that Steve can complain to. He does the same for Sam in regards to Sharon. Sam and Sharon are currently in the midst of a particularly rough patch, and the only comfort that Steve can offer is that he and Bucky had gone through the same thing at five years. In fact, they’d even called it quits a few times that year. It had never quite stuck, of course.

This is why, from the moment the Quinjet’s engines begin powering down, Sam is spraying him with questions about how he plans to handle Bucky’s inevitably short temper. Steve zones out a little while as Sam once again recounts his talent for theater in high school and college, apparently giving his resume before shamelessly assuming the role of Bucky Barnes.

“Okay, bear with me, I’m still working on this one,” he prefaces, clearing his throat noisily. “Steven Grant, you stupid reckless bastard, where the hell you been? Huh?” he demands in a sullen, low parody of Bucky’s voice, following Steve’s hurried stride at a jog to stay unnecessarily close to his ear.

“Running back and forth between Nekemte and Masha, trying to find out who the hell’s smuggling tech and intel out of Wakanda and selling it to A.I.M.” Steve’s clipped answer does nothing to deter Sam.

“So why the fuck you late, bitch?”

“He — he doesn’t usually call me a bitch.”

“Oh, so you’re my director now? Here, take two: Why the _fuck_ you late, you big dumb fuck?”

Steve doesn’t answer, except with a tired sigh.

“Come on, I’ve _heard_ him call you a big dumb fuck.”

“Because they found out we had their communication lines bugged,” he answers, miserably succumbing to the unwanted roleplay.

“And whose fault was that? Do you not know how to do your job or something? I’ve bugged the goddamn Oval Office and never gotten caught. You’re a _dad,_ Steve. A father. You have responsibilities. And oh, wait, let me go on. You couldn’t even buy a burner cell to call me at HQ and let me know you’d be late? Because that is, like, definitely somewhere in the procedural handbook that your ass helped to write. Bitch.”

“Alright Sam, Jesus Christ. Cool it,” Steve begs as the elevator doors shut, taking them down from the ground level of the hangar to the briefing rooms and emergency medical station. The expansive network under the Facility’s grounds connects the hangars to the sublevels of the rest of the buildings: the training center; the conference rooms, medical center, and operations control room in the main building; and the R&D labs and storage units in the south wing; and the north wing, which contains gyms for exercise and PT, a rec center, and the apartments. They have a five minute walk ahead of them, and two elevator rides, and Steve doesn’t know if he can take Sam picking at him the whole way.

“Alright. If you want to do this cold, you can do it cold. No skin off my back.”

And just when Sam has given up on antagonizing Steve to death, someone else shows up to finish the job. Someone who’s much better at it.

“What do you know, the prodigal dad returns.”

“Stark,” Steve smiles tightly, stepping off the elevator and resuming his quick pace, even though he knows he’s marching toward a fight.

Standing at just 5’9” in his generously-soled shoes and with short legs to match, Tony somehow manages to keep up with Steve, stride for stride. “You know, it’s really funny, actually, because we were _just_ talking about you. Nothing bad, in case your ears were burning, just having a little chit-chat, you know, wondering how you were doing, since it had been, oh—” and Tony checks his watch, voice suddenly emphatic and harsh, “about three days since you made contact with HQ.”

“Can we get this debriefing out of the way so I can go apologize to Bucky, please?”

“This is the debriefing. Do you not feel debriefed? Let me try again: what the everloving fuck happened? Because if I run a systems analysis on that Quinjet and I don't find every single communications array irreparably damaged along with your cell phone, I _am_ taking the investigation off your hands, Rogers.”

“All in the report.” Steve passes him a Starkpad and a file folder long before he finishes his tirade, sending a copy of the report up to ops as he hands it off. If he’s lucky, Bucky will still be in the control room, and he’ll see it before he sees Steve.

“Sweet Jesus, the report is done early. You _must_ have felt guilty.”

“It was a minor setback, Tony. They got suspicious about our operation and we took extra precautions so they didn’t blow it all open. Pinned the wiretaps on another faction and got the hell out of there with the intel we had.”

“Seems like you could have told us that seventy-two hours ago, but go off, I guess—”

“Tony, I was running in stealth mode.”

“Cell?”

“Traceable, with the tech they stole.”

“Remind me why I shouldn’t take this op over, again? Because I can think of like, at least seven dozen workarounds for that.”

“Because I know the case better than you, Tony.”

“Oh, uh-uh, Captain. Advanced Idea Mechanics are _my_ bad guys. You get Hydra and neo-Nazis, Thor and Wanda get all the criminals taller than eleven feet, Wilson has his Snake Club—”

“Serpent Society,” Sam interjects.

“—and I get to keep my evil technocrats. I’m just letting you borrow them for practice, Cap.”

Steve reaches the elevator and puts his thumb on the button as a clear threat to Tony: make a point, or he’s walking away. “Tony, did you have any disciplinary action in mind, or are we just flirting?” he smiles.

“Let me give this a read through. I’ll let you know,” Tony replies, matching the tone of Steve’s smile. Steve sighs and presses the button to call the elevator. Tony takes a step back, indicating that he is, in fact, free to go. “Wilson, how you doing?”

“Peachy.”

“FYI on a more domestic note, Steve, you still have to report to ops. And I was just up at Ops, and Ops was getting a little upset with you. Ops may in fact withhold various sexual favors from you for the foreseeable future.”

Steve bites his tongue and looks down at the floor so that he doesn’t just tell Tony to go fuck himself. “Noted,” he replies, as the elevator doors close.

* * *

 

Steve had expected to find Bucky waiting for him on the operations deck. He had expected him to be pissed. Furious, in fact. But the addition of his son into the already volatile mixture is an unexpected misfortune. Although, as far as misfortunes go, he’s never been happier to see one running in his direction.

Steve forgets all about Bucky and the aura of anger he’s exuding when he sees that little boy come slipping toward him on the smooth, dark tile, where the feet of his pajamas have no hope of gaining traction. He kneels down to catch him in his arms.

“Daddy, we were so scared!” Lincoln shouts.

“Hey, baby boy,” he laughs, joy bubbling out of every word as he hugs his son. Steve notices a few heads turning at the six occupied computers - the support staff members don’t see much of Lincoln, but they know about him, and they’re probably just curious. One older woman seated by the floor-to-ceiling windows puts her hand on her chest, indicating that she’s a little taken by the sight of Lincoln welcoming his dad home. She has no idea how close she is to witnessing one hell of a marital dispute.

“We were really worried about you. I couldn’t sleep and Papa, he couldn’t sleep for a really long time because we were so worried.”

“Oh—honey,” Steve stutters, voice crippled. That had hit him like a cinder block to the chest. He tightens his arms around Lincoln, rubbing his back soothingly as he lays his head on that small, sharp shoulder.

Bucky, standing by the control room door with his arms crossed while patiently awaiting his turn with Steve, catches his eye. Steve feels like a fish pinned down by a spear in the water. “Oh, I hope that hurts,” he remarks quietly, eyes dark with exhaustion, but unblinking and hot with annoyance.

“Slim! Come here, big guy!”

“Sam!”

Lincoln breaks away to run to his godfather, and suddenly there’s nothing in between Steve and Bucky, no protective barrier, and Steve swears he can _feel_ the tension building between them like electricity gathering in storm clouds. Tony was right. He’s in for it.

“Oh, that’s a good hug. Thank you,” Sam laughs from just behind Steve’s right shoulder. Steve can’t see him. Bucky’s gaze has him frozen with guilt. Steve is lucky he had even managed to stand up. “You guys want me to take him for a while?” Sam asks quietly.

“That’s okay, Sam. You gotta get some rest,” Bucky says, voice uncannily kind, even though his eyes stay fixed on Steve and his expression remains unreadable, apart from something about it that Steve might call murderous.

“Slept the whole way back. I need to eat something. Me and Lincoln can have French toast and sausage and then pass out watching _Jurassic World._ It’s what I was going to do anyway.”

“French toast and the dinosaur movie!” Lincoln proclaims, yawning, and proving every part of Sam’s suggested course of action to be appropriate.

Of course Sam is trying to get Lincoln out of the apartment. He’d read the signs of an oncoming fight long before Steve had, and Sam knows that Bucky and Steve wouldn’t dare have that fight with Lincoln in the room. With Lincoln’s enhanced hearing and the other Avengers sleeping nearby, they can’t even take their arguments into the hallway. He’s trying to help Steve, because he knows from observation that the contempt could stretch on for weeks if they don’t get the opportunity to have it out while the wound is fresh. With one of those dinosaur movies that Lincoln loves so much playing, he’ll never hear a thing. It’s a kind offer, but Sam had just returned from a mission, too, and he doesn’t possess Steve’s boundless energy or enhanced stamina. He’s got to be exhausted. Also, Steve’s not sure _he_ has the energy to have this argument tonight. He realizes it’s underhanded and selfish, but he knows that if Lincoln sticks around, he can spend time with him. And Bucky will hold off on the shouting for a few hours. Sam may very well know that he’s abandoning Steve to that fate.

“Sam, you don’t have to—” he begins lamely.

“No, _you_ need to deal with your man, because _you_ didn’t listen to me.”

Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s abandoning him. Lamb to the slaughter. Fuck. “Sam—”

“And me and my godson need to eat French toast and watch our dinosaur movie.”

“And you said sausage,” Lincoln reminds him.

“I did,” Sam nods, “I did say sausage, Slim, you’re right. And for the record,” he adds slowly and clearly, turning back toward Bucky, “I _told_ him to go buy a burner and contact you before we took off, and he said he didn’t want to go anyplace with cameras. Just so you know I tried.”

“Sam, come on, man,” Steve whines, fully aware that his voice has been reduced to some pitiful impersonation of damp air seeping out of a balloon.

“Bye, Dad! Bye, Papa!” Sam calls out cheerfully, prompting Lincoln to wave goodbye as he carries him off toward his quarters. “We’ll text you guys when we wake up from our breakfast coma.”

And suddenly, Steve is left with no Sam and no Lincoln to help him or placate Bucky. It’s just the two of them. At least there are a few bystanders - Bucky won’t dress him down in front of them. At least, Steve doesn’t think he will.

But then, in the absence of any support or excuse to avoid the confrontation, Steve realizes that he had handled the operation well. Bucky can be worried all he wants, and he can be relieved to have Steve home, but he doesn’t have any right to be angry about how Steve had dealt with the difficult turn of events in Nekemte. Steve has been at this for years, and he’s well-trained in field operations - in fact, he’s _in charge_ of field operations. He has no reason to feel bad about the calls he’d made. They were the right calls.

Bucky inclines his head toward Ops Control A, and Steve follows him into the privacy of the dark room. He shuts the door behind him, watching Bucky bend down with a sigh to collect Lincoln’s blanket from the floor. And despite the fact that Steve had so recently talked himself out of his knee-jerk guilt, it comes flooding back with redoubled intensity.

“Did he get any sleep?”

“Yeah, about three hours,” Bucky snaps immediately in reply, then folds the blanket up slowly, carefully, as if he’s using the easy, repetitive motions to calm himself down before he looks up and meets Steve’s eyes again. Steve’s not sure if the blue cast of the monitor bank on his skin makes him seem beautifully tranquil or untouchably cold.

“I sent the report up a few minutes ago - did you get a chance to look it over?”

“No,” Bucky replies tiredly, passing a hand through his hair. He sighs again, this time letting some tension out with it. Steve feels it evaporate into the air between them. Still, Steve holds his position by the door, rigid and unsure whether they’re here as partners or as teammates. Bucky looks at him with something like regret. It’s nearly an apology. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Steve answers immediately, letting a smile ghost over his face to reassure him. “I’m alright.”

Bucky groans, perhaps with weariness, perhaps relief, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, wandering blindly across the small room to collide gently with Steve’s outstretched, open palms. They settle into each other’s arms for a few long minutes, and Bucky’s right hand fidgets idly with the smooth leather straps of Steve’s battered uniform and he presses his forehead into Steve’s jaw like he’s seeking all the skin contact their clothes will allow. Steve trails his hand up Bucky’s back, following the dip of his spine between ridges of muscle to the fall of his hair, which he gathers up with his fingers and sweeps aside, exposing his neck to cooler air. He bows his head to plant a kiss just under Bucky’s earlobe.

Bucky must see that as an invitation. He stands up straighter, nose to nose with Steve, and glances down at Steve’s lips as if he’s asking for Steve to close the last inch of distance between them. Steve pulls him in by the forearms and kisses him softly at first — once, twice, short and sweet and unassuming, and then Bucky’s jaw relaxes by the third entreaty, and Steve can make the kiss what he wanted it to be: long and slow and deep; tongues reacquainting with tastes they’d been hungry for; lips catching between sharp teeth; chests meeting, breath against breath.

“God, I was worried,” Bucky whispers. Steve can feel the shape of his frown against his own mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky finally takes a reluctant step back. “I’m going to assume you had a good reason,” he laughs humorlessly. “Well, I’ve got to go over your report before you're checked in,” he realizes, and then his voice takes on a harder, more serious edge. Steve misses the softness already. “Guess we’ll see if you had a good reason or not.”

Bucky turns back to the bank of monitors and pulls up the report, leaning over the workstation to read it. Must be tired of sitting.

Steve can’t exactly help himself — he hasn’t seen Bucky in a week, and their closeness, the way Bucky had kissed him, the smallness of the room and its cool, preternatural blue cast all combine to make him feel a little giddy and feverish. He temporarily throws out decorum and puts a hand on Bucky’s hip, passing his thumb though the empty belt loop of his jeans and leaning against him, thighs touching, and with his free hand he strokes along Bucky’s other hip, trying to sooth away all the stress he’d caused.

Bucky tilts his head curiously, eyes narrowing, flicking his finger over the touch-screen to review another section of the report, and then he cuts through the pleasant atmosphere in just a few resoundingly harsh words: “You really fucked this one up, Rogers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't stop writing, send help.


	3. Fire on the Ops Deck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old habits die hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I made this four chapters because the sex ran a little long, and then the fight ran a little long, too. So...whoops! Oh well.
> 
> WARNING/DISCLAIMER: Check the tags. I warned you there would be fist fights, name calling, and marital disputes. (I mean, obviously, they work past it, but I still thought I should warn you.)
> 
> @howelleheir - Dom, this chapter is for you. Sorry for that time a smashed a huge textbook into your face, and I forgive you for busting my face open on the stairs directly afterward. I sometimes regret that we're now too old and tired to have the knock-down, drag-out fights of our teenage years (but not really, because you almost always won).

“So, either you missed your check-in and your data transfer three days ago, or you misreported the time you got back to Masha, found out they’d cleared out of the hotel and their storage units, and put a bounty on you.”

Bucky’s voice is hard. He had just finished reading Steve’s report back to him, section by section, showing him the gaping discrepancy between the time they lost contact and the time they  _ should _ have lost contact, between the time Steve had reported in one section, and the time Sam had reported in another. The window of lost contact with HQ is just a little too wide, considering the time-table on the official report.

Now, the mistake — if it is a mistake — is forgivable. Steve had compiled the report on the flight home, after all, and if Sam is to be believed, he’d piloted the jet the whole way, too. It’s entirely possible that he had made an error, but Bucky knows it’s not likely. It’s just not something Steve does, these days. The missed check-in is only a little more serious, but under these circumstances, Bucky isn’t about to let it go. “So, which is it?”

Steve doesn’t review the report too carefully, which means he already knows all about the discrepancy. He makes a face, looking away from the screens for a moment, like he’s trying valiantly not to roll his eyes.

“Sam was your number two on this one. That means he kept the minutes for the op. And I’ve never gotten a bad report back from Sam,” Bucky says, struggling to keep his voice even. “But that summary and outcome — that was all you. I mean, tell me if I’ve got this wrong, Steve, but it  _ sounds _ like you missed your fucking check-in and then tried to blame it on a communications blackout that you hadn’t even ordered yet.”

Steve, for all Bucky can  _ feel _ him wanting to look at the floor, stares right back at him, accepting the accusation with infuriating grace. “We missed the check-in,” he admits without guilt or hesitation. “And the data transfer. We had a lead, I wanted to follow it. Lead went cold, we were behind schedule, so we headed back to Masha without making the check-in at the jet.”

Bucky shuts his eyes. “And you changed the official report because you would have  _ both _ gotten written up for the missed check-in.”

“It was my call, Buck — and it was the right call for the mission. Sam shouldn’t get written up for it—”

“Because if he gets written up again after that shitshow in Florida, he’ll get suspended.”

“Yeah,” Steve concedes, finally giving in and lowering his eyes.

Bucky doesn’t think twice about it. He turns back to the monitor, corrects the time table to match Steve’s sections of the report, and signs off on the change, citing a typographical error as the reason code. One of the few perks of working ground control. He sends everything to Stark for a final review, and finally signs off.

“Thank you, Buck,” Steve nods.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he cuts him off quietly. “You have…” he takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t help, “no fucking  _ idea _ how angry I am with you.”

Bucky can’t be sure how Steve takes that news. He doesn’t care to look at him. In any case, Steve offers no reply. Bucky gives him about thirty seconds to come up with an explanation or an apology, but Steve seems to be waiting on him to speak — well, if that’s what he wants, that’s exactly what he’ll get.

“Steve, I don’t care if you fuck with the reports. We all fuck with the reports. Stark can’t say shit about it either because he fucks with them more than any of us. I don’t give a shit about that, because Sam doesn’t need to face disciplinary action for your negligence. But let me make this perfectly goddamn clear to you, Steve: you don’t get to just  _ not _ check in.” He had finally turned toward Steve, and it was as bad a decision as he thought it would be. There’s a little venom creeping into his voice that he wishes he could suck out.

“Bucky, you know why I didn’t take the time to do it. Getting back to Masha, finding out who their buyers were, that was more important.”

_ “No, _ it wasn’t—”

“Finding those buyers was the—”

“Excuse me, I’m not done talking.”

Steve has the gall to scoff at him and turn away. Jesus, it makes Bucky’s blood boil, but right now, he can hold off on walking out in the interest of making his point. “I don’t care what the fucking mission is. Stark and T’Challa sent you out there to gather intelligence, which means you got two objectives: you get that intel back to HQ — which you didn’t prioritize, because you skipped your data transfer; and then you  _ come home safe. _ That is why you do your motherfucking check-ins, so that your ground control can assess the situation and decide whether or not to redirect the operation or abort it. But you don’t  _ like _ getting pulled out of the field before you’ve got a collar. You don’t like getting orders from ground control. You’d rather put yourself  _ and _ the intel at risk for a chance to get in a fuckin’ fistfight, because you’re still so  _ goddamn _ desperate to prove—”

“Alright — that’s enough,” Steve snaps, pacing in the small room. “I’m done. I’ve been working this case for two months, Bucky. I don’t need a fucking lecture about the objectives.”

Bucky lets that comment hang in the air until Steve feels appropriately shitty for having made it. 

Finally, Steve stops pacing and breathes an apologetic sigh that makes his shoulders sag. “I’m sorry. I’m just — I’m just tired.”

“I just sat at this fucking desk for three days without hearing  _ anything _ from you. No check-in, and then you blow off coming back to HQ for two days without even calling me? That’s bullshit, Steve—”

“Hold the fuck on,” Steve interrupts him again, laughing with frustration. “Is this about losing contact with HQ or not calling  _ you? _ Because those are two different problems, and that is not a line we cross, Bucky. You know that’s not going to work.”

“You know what I think? I think you miss having somebody in ops who’s too starstruck by Captain Fucking America to call you out on this reckless bullshit.”

_ “Starstruck? _ Oh, come on. Hill? Barton? Who are we even talking about here? Because the only difference I can think of between them and you is that they trust me to stay safe and do what’s best for the mission, and they don’t let their own interests come into it.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing? I’m not letting you bend the rules, so that’s just me protecting  _ my own interests?” _ Bucky asks, voice suddenly dropping to a low, incredulous rasp.

“That’s—” Steve stammers, averting his eyes, because underneath all the stupid excuses, that’s  _ exactly _ what he’s upset about: he’s used to the team chalking his disregard for protocol and safety to  _ Cap being Cap, _ and he doesn’t like it when someone subjects him to the checks and balances that Tony gets to ignore. He just doesn’t like being told what to do. He never has. “That is  _ not _ what this is ab—”

“You know what? You wrote this goddamn thing.” Bucky grabs a thick binder from its place on the desk. Its cover is embossed with the words,  _ MISSION PROCEDURAL HANDBOOK V. 10.3 (APR 2022).  _ He heads for the door and slams the binder into Steve’s chest as he walks by, forcing him to take it or let it fall to the floor. “Read it.”

“Bucky—”

“You can sleep in that chair for a few days like I did.”

And Bucky shuts the door behind him. He doesn’t slam it, because now the control deck is starting to fill up with early risers, and he doesn’t care to have this fight publicly. He’s aware of his status on the team, and he’s even more aware of the staff’s wariness of him. The team might trust him, but the Soldier they had fought will always be there in their periphery. And it’s worse with the staff — Bucky can feel the memories of repetitive newscasts hanging over every interaction he has with them: the helicopter footage of the silent fight in Washington; the helicarriers lurching into the Potomac; the the top floors of the Vienna International Center pouring dark smoke; hundreds of people fleeing the Joint Counter Terrorist Center. Every time they look at him, he sees old headlines with his name in them, or the lack of a name that had been his. He tries to fix his face as he makes his way across the deck and out into the hallway that’s getting busier by the minute.

And he  _ almost _ manages to keep his composure and escape without making a scene, but then Steve comes jogging out of ops control after him.

“Bucky, come on—”

“Don’t,” he warns quietly.

“Can you just listen to me for one—”

Bucky stops on a dime, forcing Steve to stop with him, and pulls Steve in a little closer, forcing his hand on Steve’s elbow to remain gentle and doing an admittedly poor job of it. Steve might be pissed, and he might be tired, but he fucking well knows better than to shout Bucky down in a crowded hallway. “I’m not doing this out here.”

Steve looks like he’s dying to argue with that, and if he _ does, _ if he draws attention to this fight in the busiest hallway in the Facility right as the first flood of staff members are heading for their stations, then this little confrontation is going to get a hell of a lot more complicated  _ very _ quickly.

And Bucky doesn’t know whether it’s fortunate or disastrous, but one of the staff members actually stops. Some of them had stared as they passed, although most had averted their eyes, but this fucking brave soul had stopped. He’s an older man whose badge shows he’s got a lot of clearance, and he’s apparently itching to use it. “Everything alright, Captain?” he asks, as if he could back Steve up in a fight or something. He wouldn’t last a second, and Steve didn’t need him, anyway.

Before Bucky can speak, Steve turns toward the guy with an amused tilt to his head and an exacting stare. “What are you, the hall monitor?”

The guy’s tough attitude evaporates instantly. He can’t come up with an answer. Steve inclines his head sharply in the direction the man had been walking, and off the guy goes in a hurry. Luckily, Steve’s eyes stay fixed on him just long enough for Bucky to leave, too. 

 

Steve is too far behind to engage him until they’re back on the residential floor. He stays on Bucky’s heels from the elevator all the way to their door, but he doesn’t say a word — not with Lincoln right across the hall. But because he doesn’t know when the hell to just let something drop, he starts talking again the second they’re back in their own quarters.

“Baby, I’m sorry. Come on.”

“Stop, Steve. I’m too pissed to talk about this right now,” Bucky warns him, throwing Lincoln’s blanket into the washer and slamming the lid resolutely.

“Buck, what — look,” he sighs, collecting his thoughts as he detaches his shield from the holsters on the back of his suit and leans it in its usual place against the foyer wall. He makes his way down the hallway, still unwilling to give Bucky a moment’s peace. “I ran it in stealth mode because I felt like that was the best decision for the mission. Come on, stop being an asshole.”

Bucky turns back toward him and fixes him with a tired, unimpressed gaze. “Seriously?”

“Well—”

“I’m being an asshole, now?”

“You would have done the  _ same _ thing.”

“I’d have found a payphone,” he bites out.

“A  _ pay—?  _ Fuck, there  _ aren’t _ payphones anymore, Buck, you’re being totally fucking unreasonable.”

“Alright.” Bucky replies dismissively, and retreats into their bedroom, where he can make it abundantly clear that he’s going to get some sleep whether Steve shuts up or not. Unfortunately, that tactic is delayed: Lincoln must have come into their room while Bucky was gone. All their pillows and blankets are in the corner, as if their son had felt the need to make himself some kind of nest. Bucky starts to gather it all up and, because he doesn’t know what’s good for him, Steve tries to help him.

“Seriously, we agreed we were going to keep our relationship off the field and our work out of our relationship, and you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, Bucky.”

“Oh,  _ fuck _ you, Steve. I’m doing fine,” he snarls, whipping the sheet they’re somehow both folding sharply out of Steve’s hands and throwing it onto the bed. “Jesus Christ, I’m  _ not holding up my end of the— _ God.”

“What the hell got into you, huh?”

“Don’t pull that patronizing bullshit with me—”

“Is this about Lincoln? I mean, if that’s what this is, just fucking tell me and we’ll have that argument as his parents, but we’re not having that argument in ops, and we’re not—”

“Steve, this  _ is _ about Lincoln, this is about  _ me, _ this about you and me on the team, you and me at home, because when you can’t follow the procedures  _ you wrote _ you are putting  _ all of that—” _

“You don’t agree with the call I made? Fine,  _ fuck it, _ but we leave it at that door.”

“I left ground control in ops. Guess what?  _ I’m _ pissed at you too, you fuckin’ moron.”

“Goddamnit, Bucky, can we do this without the name-calling?”

“No, we can’t.”

“Come on!”

“Go to hell.”

_ “Jesus,  _ Bucky—!”

“Just a second ago I was an asshole, so you don’t get to—”

“You’re a fuckin’ overemotional  _ prick, _ is what you are—”

Steve doesn’t get to finish his retort. Bucky’s right fist is clenched by the time he says  _ overemotional _ and within the next few words, something inside his head has popped like a champagne cork and he’s whipped around and punched Steve square in the nose.

Steve had better be thankful it was just his right hand.

Steve’s head snaps back under the staggering force of the blow, but the moment he recovers, Bucky barely has the time to register the almost comical shock on Steve’s face before Steve has reacted reflexively, and landed an  _ incredibly _ solid strike that connects with Bucky’s jaw hard enough to make his ears ring.

His left hand arcs toward Steve’s solar plexus, but Steve catches him by the wrist of his prosthetic, uses the momentum of Bucky’s body and the arm’s over-balancing weight, and with one powerful twist and lift, flips him and lays him out flat on the floor.

Bucky briefly understands that he could just let it end there, but now he’s seeing red. The second his back hits the ground, he sweeps out one leg and kicks Steve’s feet out from underneath him. Steve lands hard on his belly and gets the wind knocked out of him  _ bad _ .

They lay beside each other on the carpet for a few tense seconds.

Neither of them blink — they watch each other like enemies in combat, fearful and determined and both  _ ruthlessly _ angry. Both of them are rigidly poised, weight in their hands, ready to spring up again if someone makes a move, each waiting to see of the other wants to keep fighting or, miraculously, surrender.

They both choose to surrender.

Bucky’s eyes soften first, but Steve is the first to laugh. Within a few seconds, Bucky shuts his eyes and joins him, unable to stop himself. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. This is so stupid. It’s stupid and tragic and unacceptable and  _ hilarious. _ He can hardly even place  _ why _ it’s suddenly strikes him as so gut-wrenchingly funny, but it does.

“Oh, shit,” Bucky groans.

“We probably...we probably shouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

“I’m sorry, fuck —  _ fuck,  _ I can’t believe I punched you. I’m so sorry.” He can’t possibly sound sincere through all his laughter, but he hopes Steve knows that he is.

“I punched you back.”

“Yeah, but I started it.”

“Well, you know, we don’t fight much these days and—”

“Yeah we do, we fight all the time.”

“Not like  _ that—” _

Bucky had almost regained control of himself, but then the reason that this is all so funny finally occurs to him, and he has another spell of giggles. “Oh my God, Steve, I think we’re just used to—”

Steve realizes exactly what he’s talking about before he can even finish the sentence. “Last time we fought,  _ this _ shit was totally fine,” he pants, gesturing back and forth between Bucky’s busted lip and his own bleeding nose, laughing harder with every word.

Bucky still  _ wants _ to be angry, but Steve’s laughter is as contagious as ever. “This can’t count as domestic violence.”

“Oh my God. Does this count?”

“We should call the cops on each other,” Bucky suggests, barely getting the words out.

“Oh, I bet they’d love taking down our history. Shit, Bucky, you’ve stabbed me.”

“I remember that.”

“You  _ shot _ me!”

“Couple times.”

“In the  _ stomach—” _

“Didn’t you break my arm and choke me ‘til I passed out one time?”

“Uh, yeah,” Steve concedes, rubbing mirthful tears from his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“And didn’t I try to crash a helicopter into you? In Berlin? I don’t know, that one’s fuzzy.”

“Oh, you sure did.”

Bucky’s laughter finally begins to trail off, leaving him lying on the carpet, eyes and cheeks wet, body aching and tailbone throbbing where it had connected with the floor. “You ever miss it?”

“...What?”

“You miss fighting me?”

“Jesus, no,” Steve sighs, and then the inescapable laughter overtakes him again. “I mean, I don’t miss — yeah, fuck, maybe just a little bit—”

“God, I knew it.”

“Well. I feel a lot better, how about you?”

“Mmhm.”

Steve drags himself across the floor to close the distance between them and press himself against Bucky’s side, resting on one elbow and looking tenderly down at him. “So what brought that on?”

Bucky’s jaw tightens reflexively, and suddenly he can’t look at Steve. He swallows hard, tasting blood from the punch Steve had landed on his jaw. “The...punching?”

“Mm.”

_ “Overemotional _ was a pretty low blow after — after everything I’ve — after everything that’s happened.”

Steve cringes when he hears the words repeated back to him. “Yeah. I...that crossed a line. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. We’re even.”

“So, we’re good?”

“We’re good.”

“And Lincoln’s over at Sam’s,” Steve reminds him with an idiotic, suggestive half-smile and an arched brow.

“How long has it been since we had—?”

Bucky doesn’t get the opportunity to finish his thought. Steve bends down and kisses him hard, and there’s an edge of hunger in the tender way his hand cradles the back of his neck. It takes Bucky a long moment to reciprocate, but once the initial surprise has passed, he reaches up and hooks the fingers of his prosthetic into the shoulder strap of Steve’s uniform, giving him no choice but to keep kissing him.

When he finally allows Steve to break the kiss and take a breath, Bucky is surprised to find an expression on his face that's both unsure and a little embarrassed. Steve clears his throat. “You were going to say sex, right?”

Bucky allows himself a smile, even though it makes his split lip sting. “Well, I was going to say  _ some goddamn peace and quiet, _ but—”

“But you  _ meant—” _

“Yeah, I meant sex.”


	4. Like You Mean It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're already worked up. Why waste a good fight?

Peace and quiet suddenly feels like an overrated concept. There are better ways to spend the dark hours of the morning.

Even though they’ve spent the last few minutes laughing and joking and teasing to dispel the electric tension that had brought about their earlier altercation, the air between them remains stiflingly charged. Bucky is staring up at Steve’s face in the half-light of the bedroom, thrown into sharp shadows by the single bedside lamp and softened only by the faintest beginnings of sunrise beyond their open curtains. His cheeks are still flushed from their shouting match, and their are traces of sweat on his forehead from the fight. Bucky can feel the quick rhythm of Steve’s breath pressing into his side. He can feel the ridges and textures of Steve’s suit against his ribcage, even through his shirt.

It’s been  _ months. _ Lincoln hasn’t been sleeping in his own bed, no matter what they offer or threaten. He sleeps in between the two of them or he doesn’t sleep at all. When Bucky isn’t home, he sleeps with his head in the crook of Steve’s shoulder and his hands tucked underneath Steve’s back, and when Steve is gone, he curls up with his back to Bucky’s chest and pulls Bucky’s arm over him, and he uses his papa’s hand to block the sunlight from his eyes once it’s closer to morning. Last month, they had moved his bedtime back an hour in the hopes that he’d go to bed tired, and it’s getting a little better now, but they still never know when he’ll barge in. They’ve had to start sleeping in clothes — a predisposition of their shared paranoia which they’d only just defeated when he came into their lives.

After so long, Bucky’s looking at Steve like a water-mirage in the desert.

Steve tries to be as tender as ever. Tries to start this off slow. But that pace is firmly at odds with all of Bucky’s current needs, and he wonders if Steve is just trying to be courteous and gentle as a misguided favor, if he’s not fighting against the same needs. Even as his careful, sweet hand trails from Bucky’s neck over his shoulder and down his chest, Bucky thinks he can feel something in Steve’s fingertips, smell something in his sweat, discern something from the shape of his parted lips and dark eyes that tells him that he and Steve want exactly the same thing right now. Steve’s just waiting for him to ask for it.

The backs of Steve’s knuckles stroke soothingly over the inside of his arm, and he can’t take it anymore. “No — uh-uh,” Bucky slurs, breath quickening as a burst of arousal makes him dizzy. He catches Steve’s hand in his and pushes it away.

Steve backs off fast.  _ Dumbass. _ “Sorry — are you—”

“Just fuck me.”

Even to Bucky, the words feel like the shot of a starting gun. His heart speeds up and so does Steve’s — Bucky can see the tremors of a pulsepoint in his neck. As soon as Bucky makes his demand, something about Steve changes. Maybe it’s an effect of the travel-stained uniform or the boots on his feet, or the blood smeared across his upper lip, but suddenly he doesn’t look so courteous or gentle or sweet. It makes Bucky think of their early years in Steve’s crumbling Brooklyn flat, of the way Steve used to be — because the truth was, underneath all those years of careful practice, Steve was rough. Rude and brash, with a quick temper and a mean streak a mile wide, if the circumstances were right. But that had changed once he was bigger and stronger: a man didn’t need to act big when he could pick up a thousand pounds and toss it like a sandbag. He compensated for all that size and strength with feather-softness. It’s an endearing courtesy, but right now, Bucky doesn’t want reservation. He wants the same old Steve that had practically killed himself fucking him into a sagging mattress, who’d leave a bruise or two on the backs of Bucky’s thighs just to show him that he could, the one who’d manhandle him and pull his hair just to impress him. And he wants all of that in a goddamn Captain America suit.

“Like you mean it,” Bucky smiles.

“Yeah?” And sure enough, Steve’s breathless, eager grin makes him look a hundred pounds lighter. Bucky’s hand brushes the carbon fiber fabric stretched over his broad chest.

Absolutely fucking perfect.

But once Steve has permission, there’s no more time for Bucky to quietly appreciate whatever lottery he’s won.

Steve rises in one fluid motion, taking Bucky’s hand and pulling him up along with him. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of Bucky’s jeans and draws him in until their torsos are pressed flush together. When he releases his hand, he grips his jaw instead and  _ takes _ the kiss he wants. Bucky’s glad Steve is still holding him up, because he melts like an ice cube in Steve’s mouth. Goes weak in the knees like he’s some kind of schoolkid.

Steve takes one step toward him, driving him back with the force of the kiss, guiding him with those unforgiving fingers on his jaw, and Bucky has to concede ground until his back hits the wall. Steve still doesn’t let go of his jaw or break the kiss and Bucky’s starting to think he never will —  _ which is fine, death by suffocation wouldn’t be all that bad _ — and his left hand travels along the waistband of his pants from his hip-bone to his fly, unbuttons it with a flick of his thumb and tears the zipper open. Steve cups his cock through his briefs like he wants to slide him up the goddamn wall, and just when he’s forced Bucky’s hips to cant upward, he pushes them back down with the heel of his hand.  _ God, Steve never took those gloves off, did he? _ Bucky pulls a desperate inhale through his nose and he can smell the brown leather that’s holding his head in place against the wall, thinks of that same leather gripping his cock, and has to struggle not to come right at that moment, right into Steve’s palm.

He had been groaning into Steve’s mouth, so when Steve finally breaks the kiss with a pop and gives him a breath, Bucky gets caught in the middle of a full-voiced moan. Steve bares his teeth like he’s been punched in the gut when he hears it, loses a little bit of the control he’d been exercising over both Bucky and himself. He releases Bucky’s jaw and his hand descends on his shoulder, forces him to bend forward, and then he takes a fistfull of the hem of Bucky’s shirt and pulls it off over his head in one quick tug. Stands him back up. Leans into him. Traps him between a plaster wall and what might as well be a rock wall.

“Oh my God,” Bucky chokes out, when the rough fabric and cool, hard buckles of that suit are pressed into his bare chest.

Steve laughs at him, palm still grinding into Bucky’s cock. “You know, I keep wondering if I oughta ditch this thing, wear something a little more practical—”

“Don’t—” Bucky interrupts him with a low gasp.

“And then I remember how much you like it.”

“Nice texture,” he pants, busted lip and tingling tongue making the words slur together. “Fits you real tight.”

“You want me to keep it on while I fuck you?”

_ “Fuck.” _

“You got it.”

Bucky has about a five second window before he comes, and he doesn’t want to do that just yet. Maybe he  _ wants _ to, but he’s not going to let himself. This isn’t like those quick, desperate meet-ups in the woods in ‘44, just beyond the light of the Commandos’ cooking fire — Bucky’s just as strong as Steve is, and he feels like reminding him of that fact. This wouldn’t be fun if he didn’t make Steve work for it, anyway.

He gives Steve no warning — just grabs the straps of the shield’s holster where they cross his chest, lifts, and throws. Steve stumbles backward, thrown off balance, thighs hitting the end of their mattress, and Bucky steps forward and pushes him hard before he can recover. By the time Steve’s back has hit the bed, Bucky’s already got his utility belt unclasped, and he’s working the fly of his slacks open. He slides the cup out of Steve’s jockstrap and doesn’t bother with much else — just yanks the fabric off to the side and pulls his cock free. God, Steve must have been losing his mind, stuck in that thing. Bucky gives him a few hard strokes, leaning over him, pinning him down with his left hand on Steve’s chest, and Steve’s cock fills with blood fast, getting thicker by the second in Bucky’s grip.

Bucky grabs his legs and pulls his hips to the end of the bed, fucking up their sheets and not caring, drops to his knees, and keeps his hand tight on the base of Steve’s cock as he takes the head of it into his mouth. He gets a little thrill out of the way all that pre-cum stings when it hits the cut on his lip. Steve pushes himself up on his elbows so he can watch, but it’s not long until Bucky gets him to tilt his head back and squeeze his eyes shut. He doesn’t care what he looks like right now, he knows he’s being sloppy, he knows he’s a little undone — hair’s wild and tangled, blood on his chin, lips red and wet, down on his knees sucking Steve off with the lights on and acting desperate for it. Steve’s cock is thick and heavy against his tongue, driving hard against the back of his throat every time his sinks down onto it. Deep breath in through his nose, and he relaxes his jaw, takes his hand off the base, and sucks him in as deep as he can, eyes watering as he palms his own cock through his briefs. Steve just about rips their sheets, he’s pulling on them so hard.

It only takes a few minutes of that before Steve’s abdomen is clenching powerfully, making his cock lengthen and swell in quick pulses. Bucky’s forgotten about all of his other plans, and he’s lost in a feverish premonition of feeling Steve’s come hit the back of his throat, but Steve interrupts his fantasy with an ungentle hand, grabbing him brutally by the hair and forcing his head back until Bucky’s mouth is empty and they’re both panting hard, baring their teeth at one another like animals fighting over scraps.

Steve’s on his feet before Bucky gets his head to stop swimming, and he lets Steve handle him like a fucking  _ doll, _ throw him down onto the mattress and tear his shoes and jeans and briefs off all in a matter of seconds, and then lift him by the hips and flip him onto his stomach. Steve grips the cheeks of his ass and spreads him out with his thumbs, and Bucky’s not sure where he’s expecting this to go from there, but Steve gets a hell of a shout out of him when he drags his tongue from his perineum right up to his tailbone, and then presses it into his ass just as far as Bucky’s suddenly tense muscles will allow.

“What the  _ fuck—” _ he sobs into the mattress. They’ve never  _ done this. _ This is new. This is fucking  _ shameful.  _ Steve doesn’t stop or slow down, and he doesn’t let Bucky pull away from his mouth. He eats him out until he finally gives in and lets him, fucks into him with his tongue and ignores all the broken cussing that’s getting muffled by the sheets Bucky has buried his face in. He’s not doing this halfway, and when Bucky tries to tell him to back off before he comes, he ignores that, too. If anything, he pushes his tongue in deeper and moves it a little faster.

Bucky’s not sure if it takes seconds or minutes — he just knows it’s an embarrassingly short time before it gets too hot, too slick and wet, too filthy and shocking and overwhelmingly good, and he blacks out with the force of his orgasm. He arches up off the mattress, still trying to get away from Steve’s mouth before the overstimulation kills him, but Steve holds onto him, never once touching his cock, groaning and growling against him and letting his warm breath and hot tongue burn against Bucky’s ass like he’s hoping to start a fire inside him. He comes until he fucking well sees  _ God. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ran a little short because I decided to split up the sex scene a little. I'm about to head off to a rehearsal that will inevitably run late and then turn around and leave at 6am for a conference, and the rest of my week will be similarly busy. I'd have been heartbroken if I didn't get a single thing posted this weekend, so...well, here's 2k of Steve eating ass like it's groceries. It's what I got.


	5. God Damn, Steve Rogers

Bucky doesn’t know where one act ends and the next begins - after an orgasm that he could only call _awesome_ in the Biblical sense of the word, his vision is filled with dark spots and bright colors, his ears are ringing, and his muscles aren’t responding. He had collapsed into their messy sheets at some point, half-conscious and non-responsive, and before he’s capable of moving on his own again, Steve has dragged him to the foot of the bed, flipped him onto his back, and taken his legs into bruising grips. Bucky can only stare up at him, dumb and hazy-eyed, but somewhere beyond all the buzzing in his overheated brain, he can recognize that Steve is just as wrecked as he is.

As promised, Steve has kept his suit on, but the belt is still unclasped and the front of his slacks is still hanging open. He’s tucked himself back into his jock strap, but it’s hiding _nothing_ \- Bucky can still see just how hard he his, and the damp patches that his own mouth had left and the slick sheen of wetness gathering at the head of his cock. There’s sweat dripping from his hairline at his temples and his cheeks are flushed with arousal and his pupils are blown, making the whites of his eyes look brighter against the slivers of blue iris. The blush has crept from his cheeks down to his neck, and even though the suit is hiding it, Bucky knows it extends over his collarbone and chest, and that there’s a little line of perspiration cutting toward his abdomen. He’s almost completely covered from the neck down, but below the top of his uniform and just above the elastic of his jockstrap, a few inches of skin are mercifully exposed, giving Bucky a staggeringly nice view of the veins trailing down toward his cock and the sharp lines of his iliac furrow to frame the whole lovely picture.

He has only a fraction of a second to enjoy the way Steve looks before the respite ends. Break’s over, whether he’s got his breath back or not, and Steve’s fingers drag a hot line up his thigh and plunge into him - two, right up to the knuckles, twisting and pressing so hard it practically lifts his hips off the mattress. He sets a fast rhythm from the start and compliments it with the sting and stretch of a third finger within seconds. Bucky inhales in gasps and exhales in groans. He’s completely powerless to do anything else. Can’t even feel the bed underneath him anymore.

Fortunately, Steve _has_ to give him a few seconds before they go any further. As soon as he slides his fingers free, Bucky has enough wherewithal to haul himself upright and shove Steve back a step. He has only a brief window before Steve pushes back, and he knows it, so he takes what he wants without hesitation: grabs Steve’s sweat-dampened waistband and jerks it downward, pinning the elastic right under his balls, and gets a hold on Steve’s hips that’s so merciless it might tear muscle and shatter bone, and takes him back into his mouth because he wants him wet and hard, and he wants him _right fucking now_.

Steve gets caught somewhere between the high of arousal and rage incited by the teasing, and yanks Bucky’s head back by a fistful of his hair. He circles around to the side of the bed like a boxer aiming a strike, and Bucky turns with him, keeping their eyes locked, anticipating the encroaching clash with fierce intensity. Bucky’s eyes are narrow and predatory, Steve’s are lazy and hooded, infuriatingly indicative of how _easy_ he knows this is going to be. Bucky’s jaw is clenched shut, Steve’s is relaxed, lips parted in a taunt. They’re both smiling.

The moment their bodies meet again is catastrophic - a tumultuous battle for dominance, heedless of the fragility of everything in the room that isn’t their unbreakable bodies. The bedside lamp is caught in the crossfire and falls to the carpet with its shade askew, utterly disregarded. If anyone is in the rec room below their quarters or either of the adjacent apartments, then they _can_ hear what’s happening. They, too, are ignored.

Steve fumbles desperately, hurrying, looking for the right angle to press in, until Bucky grabs him by the cock and does it himself. That’s the last moment of hesitation. Everything else is raw, chaotic instinct, and Steve fucks him like he doesn’t care if either of them survives the encounter. Bucky’s arms, hooked possessively around Steve’s neck, his open eyes and fixed gaze all seem to be _daring_ Steve to behave otherwise. They fuck each other senselessly. They don’t stop to kiss or profess their love, they’re not bothering to alter their wants for any bullshit courtesies; neither concedes an inch of ground, and each takes as much as he wants at the expense of the other without wasting time on apologies.

Bucky sees Steve’s breath hitch in his throat and watches the way his back bows, feels him swell up inside of him as his thrusts get quicker and rougher, and he _knows_ he’s going to outlast him - and that’s exactly what he wants. He doesn’t want to watch Steve come inside him through a post-orgasmic haze; he wants to scrutinize every obscene detail of it, he wants to take in the shameless carnality of that flush on his face and his bared teeth, and the rivulets of sweat winding through all the dirt still clinging to his neck from his mission, study every buckle and seam of his goddamn suit, and smirk at the star on his chest that symbolizes America’s pious sweetheart, their righteous defender, because, _fuck, just look at what he can do to him. No one else can do that to him._

Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands, thumbs pressing into his jaw, forcing him to look him in the eye and _keep_ looking him in the eye as he comes, so he can see that hint of a victorious smile dancing on his lips and know that Bucky’s still in control, that he’s taking what he wants and getting it. He watches every shudder and every heartbeat pounding through every protruding vein, and he watches Steve come apart like Steve _owes it to him_. And after twenty seconds, when Steve is on the verge of collapsing under the sheer force of his orgasm, he bites out, “Don’t you fucking stop.”

But Steve has never conceded a fight gracefully. He’s a born sore loser, and he’s always going to give as good as he gets. He doesn’t take any time to recover: he tears Bucky’s hands away from his shoulders and pins his wrists to the mattress, thrusting hard enough to break the grip of his thighs around his waist and spread his legs wider, and dips his head to plant one hard kiss on Bucky’s chest before dragging his tongue over his nipple and drawing it into a sucking, bruising, hungry  bastardization of a kiss.

They’re like two tectonic plates grinding together, and Bucky shakes like an old brick building, feels like he’s cracking right down the middle like a concrete bridge when he comes.

He sees fireworks in the dark room and wonders for a moment if his hearing will ever recover.

He doesn’t count the seconds he spends reduced to dead weight under Steve’s still-solid, still powerful body. He drags gasp after gasp of warm air into his parched throat, hoping the oxygen will bring back his vision, and takes inventory of sensations as they return. Steve is still inside him, and either his cock his still throbbing hard or Bucky is still contracting around him. Steve’s mouth is still toying with his chest, suddenly gentle and slow and soothing. Tears have tracked over his temples and soaked into his hairline, though he had no recollection of crying. Steve’s hands are no longer riveting him to the bed, but he hasn’t taken them away - their fingers are intertwined, smooth and flush together on his right and clumsy and mismatched on his left. Somewhere in his subconscious, his past-self - the one he’d left fuming in Ops - is less than impressed with his behavior. But _fuck him._

And it’s morning.

And he’s starving.

And incomprehensibly exhausted. He could sleep for days, right here, starting now.

And he should probably check on Lincoln, at some point. Unfortunately, it’s going to take a hot shower and a confessional before he can look his son in the eyes again.

But Lincoln will be asleep for a few more hours at least, and Steve has kissed a path over his chest and up the line of his sternum, settling on the tenderest part of his neck, and he relinquishes with a contented shiver.

“You alright?”

“Yeah. I’m still mad at you, though,” Bucky smiles.

“I haven’t even pulled out, Buck, give it a rest.”

 

At three o’clock, they text Sam with an offer of a real, if late, breakfast.

Lincoln arrives first, announcing himself with a comically adult proclamation of, “Dad, Papa! I’m home!” Looks like he’s dressed himself out of the little stash of clothes they keep in Sam’s quarters. He hasn’t worn the blue jeans in a while, though, and they’re an inch too short.

Steve is just finishing up at the stove when he arrives. Lincoln drags a barstool over to him, climbs it, and fastens himself unceremoniously to Steve’s back.

“Slim, your dad has got his hands full,” Sam warns, letting himself in and proceeding immediately to the kitchen.

When they eat together, Sam likes to test all of the food before Steve plates it, just to see if he needs to add anything himself. Steve watches him with a half-smile and a sigh as he tries the corned beef hash. “Hey, traitor.”

“That’s better than last time,” Sam remarks, pointing down into the skillet. “I told you. Lawry’s. Fixes everything wrong with your cooking. How did you do last night? You two work it out like grownups?”

If that _isn’t_ meant to be a double entendre, Sam is missing a grand opportunity. God, Steve hopes they hadn’t been too loud. “Yeah, we talked through it.”

Lincoln shimmies a little higher to get closer to Steve’s ear and whisper, “Did you get in trouble, Dad?”

Steve raises his eyebrows and cranes his neck to stare challengingly back at him. “Yeah. A little bit.”

“Are you still allowed on the computer?”

“For now.”

“I notice I’m not suspended this morning,” Sam adds quietly.

“Thank Bucky for that. He fixed the report and signed off on it.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that. Even though, to be totally fair, it _was_ all your fault.”

“Did you guys...cheat at a mission?” Lincoln whispers conspiratorially, then startles and ducks his head down to Steve’s shoulder as Bucky enters the living room, redressed and fresh from the shower.

“They cheated a little bit,” Bucky sighs. “But I already know all about it.”

“Papa, it’s bad to cheat at stuff--”

“Really?” Bucky snaps at him, smiling as he takes down four bowls and glasses for the table. “Because we’ve _all_ played Uno with you, you little butthead.”

“I didn’t _know_ it was four cards!”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Bucky cuts him off with a laugh. “You tell Tony we cheated and I’ll never feed you again, you got that?”

“You would probably feed me if I cried,” Lincoln snipes back, using the barstool to climb back down from Steve’s shoulders and plant himself at the table. “Or dad or Sam would, or Tony would give me food for telling on you, and I’d go live with him.”

“Dang, he’s got an _exit strategy._ ” Sam shifts just a little closer to Steve, turning down the heat on a pan of bacon, and then lowers his voice to a whisper. “Got a little love-bite on your neck, there, Cap.”

“Mmhm,” Steve replies contritely.

“Oh, you _did_ settle like grownups--”

“Sam.”

But Lincoln hasn’t overheard - he’s occupied with the difficult task of pouring (or rather, _spilling_ ) his own orange juice. Bucky tries futilely to steady the carton, bickering with his son all the while.

“You be careful, Cap,” Sam grins, suddenly speaking at a normal volume as he makes his way out the kitchen, full plate in one hand and a rag for Bucky and the spilled juice in the other. “That’s how you two got into this mess.”

Lincoln looks up from his overfilled glass. “What mess?”

Sam, Steve, and Bucky trade knowing glances, and wordlessly agree to let Lincoln remain oblivious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Took me a minute to get back to this and get that last chapter posted, y'all. Sorry! <3

**Author's Note:**

> More very soon. God bless America, don't do drugs, make good choices.


End file.
